


an idle conversation

by MK_Marlowe



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2019-03-30 06:50:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13945641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MK_Marlowe/pseuds/MK_Marlowe
Summary: Even an innocent conversation can light a spark of jealousy.





	an idle conversation

“No, no,” Gimli says, and his laughter rumbles out of his chest like thunder, powerful and pleasing. Legolas is helpless, captivated, charmed. “We cannot see in an unlit mine; we rely on what we can hear! Echoes, you understand. And...”

Here, he hesitates, the laughter fading. There is a calculation in his dark eyes, and Legolas leans closer, as if he might read it, and solve it before his friend. “Another secret, then?” he asks, keeping it light, but this makes Gimli’s irritation alight.

“Secrets!” he huffs, and there is a fine, bright humor in his mien. “Secrets we have, and plenty--don’t think I am free to share those of craft! But this is less secret, and more...”

The silence stretches as Gimli Silver-Tongue searches for words. And if he cannot find them, then how can Legolas?

“There is... there are other senses, other ways of seeing, hearing...” His head tilts, considering, until Legolas nods. “I would suspect that Elves have many more than Dwarves, simply for how you are made.”

It is a polite way to say it. “We can sense Fea, more often than not,” Legolas concedes. “It makes encountering the servants of the Enemy that much more... uncomfortable.”

Gimli’s smile is back. “An understatement, I am sure. But it isn’t Fea I speak of. Rather, there is what we would call, in the common tongue, the North sense.”

“You can sense which way is North,” Legolas reasons, and blinks. “You can sense which way is North?”

“Not I,” Gimli says immediately, and sighs. “I would say perhaps a third of our people have it. For navigating in the deep places of the earth, out of sight of sun, moon, or star, it is beyond precious. There can be nothing more useful in the dark.”

“North sense,” Legolas repeats, and while it might seem strange at first, Gimli’s explanation holds sound. To know infallibly which way one is heading, no matter the surroundings--he understands, now, Aragorn’s reasoned choice on the banks of Anduin before their Fellowship was sundered. “Aragorn knew this?”

“Had he traveled with any caravan of Dwarves, he would have,” Gimli says, and Legolas feels, somehow, betrayed. It must show in his face, for Gimli takes umbrage at once. “Don’t glare at me like that, Elf! Had you traveled with any Dwarves, you’d have learned the same!”

“I traveled with you, didn’t I?” It is a ridiculous fit of pique, and Gimli knows that Legolas knows it, which restores amusement to a conversation that had veered into a seriousness neither quite understands.

So when Gimli says, with fond exasperation, “And now you know!” Legolas allows himself to be mollified. Even if Aragorn knew something of Gimli before Legolas did. 

Though it still rankles.


End file.
